Alabama has launched an online tool to help the state’s veterans navigate a complicated and confusing web of support services.
The Alabama Veterans Network (AlaVetNet) is a voluntary partnership of 18 state agencies and a number of private veterans interests groups. The organization is divided into six committees, made up of volunteers with expertise in addressing concerns about education, behavioral health, legal assistance, homelessness, family services and employment for veterans.
Gov. Robert Bentley, who created AlaVetNet by executive order in 2013, announced the launch of a website for the interagency initiative in August that is part of an overall goal to unify services to those who have been in the military.
The site’s database is organized by need and location, after committee members feared that many of the state’s 415,000 veterans were ill-informed of the resources available to them.
Paulette Risher, co-chair of the employment committee, told the Washington Examiner that she coordinated the launch of the database with the support from the governor’s office after recognizing a need to give particularly elderly and rural populations easy access to a comprehensive list of vetted support organizations.
“Alabama’s got great programs for veterans, but they haven’t always been visible and connected in any meaningful or consistent way. The website is really the first major step in that direction,” the retired major general said.
Risher, a job placement director for nonprofit Still Serving Veterans, said the site serves as “a place where we can work on their behalf or direct [clients] to.”
Concerned Veterans for America outreach and research analyst Shaun Rieley told the Examiner that AlaVetNet is one of a growing number of initiatives by states attempting to take better “ownership of their veterans, rather than pushing it onto the federal government all the time.”
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is launching a similarly consolidated resource website called Vets.gov after years of concerns the agency is failing to efficiently and effectively provide troops’ earned services, most notably in its hospital system.
“The problem tends to be that when the federal government, and this happens across all bureaucracies, assumes this role as omnicompetent guarantor of all things,” Rieley said. He argued that having a “web” of resources at the local or state level helps to ensure that veterans are still being taken care of even when a centralized authority fails.
Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs commissioner Clyde Marsh said AlaVetNet is designed to help the varying levels of government and private groups work “hand in hand” in offering service members support.
Marsh said the organization anticipates updating its long-term strategy and goals soon, and members of the six committees plan on presenting their recommendations to AlaVetNet’s board of commissioners in September.
Despite AlaVetNet’s lack of designated funds from a state government in the midst of a budget crisis, Bentley said in a statement to the Examiner that “AlaVetNet’s design allows it to help veterans without the need for a designation in a budget.”
Though previous efforts to unify statewide veterans services have failed to outlast the sponsoring governor’s administration and the state House of Represenatives has begun impeachment proceedings against him, Bentley remained hopeful that AlaVetNet would endure. (Proceedings began after the governor allegedly had an affair with a former political adviser.)
Bentley said the “low-burden but high-impact nature of the website makes it easily incorporated into the next administration,” before asserting he is “confident every state would benefit from having a similar service like this in place.”
“Because AlaVetNet’s focus is on Alabama, it has the ability to reach deep into the communities. Working with organizations within the communities creates a direct connection between concerns and issues of veterans.”
The coalition’s coordinator, retired Maj. Gen. Larry Ross, said he expects that support from the private and public entities to fulfill veterans’ needs on a more localized level would help ensure its survival, despite uncertainties about the next administration and the precise nature of state involvement.
“We’ve got fantastic veterans and some of them have not been treated properly,” he said. “They don’t need a bunch of handouts, they just need help.”
